Bach/Xenakis: between Labyrinths and Constellations

Between percussion, dance and two monuments of music history, Pedro Carneiro and Teresa Simas revisit their encounter in London at the South Bank Centre 25 years ago. Bach’s The Musical Offering and Xenakis’s Pléïades are celebrated here with a huge percussion orchestra and dancers, in a continuum between labyrinths and constellations, in the immediate joy of the ceaseless propulsion of sound, rhythm and movement, with a new choreographic creation by Teresa Simas.

Based on an enigmatic theme by Frederick the Great, The Musical Offering (1747) is one of the great monuments of contrapoint art from Bach’s final years. Inspired by the stars and constellations, with the brilliance of magical West African percussion and the hypnotic Gamelan from the islands of Java and Bali, the Pléïades (1979) transports us into an unstoppable maelstrom, a profusion of colours, movements and rhythms. Across the 232 years that separate the two works, we witness a contemplation on geometry, patterns, form and invention.

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